Waiting for Rain

If you're on Facebook they have a memories function that  goes back to that date for various years. Mine kept going back to the Pittsburgh Yarn and Fiber Festival, one of the biggest shows in the country and that will lead us back to Mary - one of the strongest women I've ever had the honor of knowing. This festival has classes and people send in a request to teach, but sometimes they ask you and when they do it's like having your art work win first prize. I'd entered an intricate lace shawl I'd worked on for months at the local festival - only to lose to one of the judge's daughter in law who had (I kid you not) produced a plain crocheted scarf. She also won second place,hmmm. Anyhow as I was stewing in my tiny pool of knitter's hate I got a call from the person running the Pittsburgh festival asking me to teach two classes! Me! She has come down to the festival and saw my work, she told me how impressed she was, I was so flattered.  I went to the yarn shop we all shopped at and asked the owner if I could pay her to  give me a class on how to teach a class - and got ripped apart with the owner telling me she had no idea how they'd picked me, it was a horrible idea and she knew I'd fail. (Mary suggested later on it might have been the owner had been upset because she'd never been asked). Needless to say at our knitting group I was deciding to not do it and Mary told me to wait. She called me the next day to let me know we were going to her friend's yarn shop that weekend and they would both teach me how to teach a class. I had the best day - it was such a confidence booster. The day of the class Mary and  my other friend Stephanie met me up there, they both had signed up and gave me so much support, walking me through the parts I faltered, I have never forgotten their kindness that day - they made it a once in a lifetime experience I'll always treasure.

I met Mary in a knitting group outside of Pittsburgh, when I started with Bayada it was a few miles from my office - I knit with that group for over five years, every week. We had some people come and go, but we had a core that always showed up. I met Mary when she was in her 70's, she was a retired ortho nurse so we had some common ground. She was married to someone not likeable (not abusive, just not likeable) but she loved to travel and she collected yarn from all over the world. She was such a  precise knitter and would often be found walking us through some of the more complicated patterns, she never got annoyed or short with anyone and yes, she too taught. One night when she came in she announced she was getting divorced - we were floored. But she said she was not going to spend the rest of her life miserable with someone who didn't appreciate her. The following months she regaled us with tales of the divorce which went anything but smoothly often having us laughing with her antics. After we moved I kept in contact, but not as much as I would have liked - we were all over the place the first year. And then Mary passed away in her sleep unexpectedly - I felt so terrible. She had finally gotten the divorce and was getting on with her life, I know she passed peacefully, but how unfair that was. 

This pattern kept coming up in Ravelry and I know my former knitting pals will recognize i, it's called Waiting For Rain.We all have one of those projects we drag our feet to finish and this was Mary's albatross, as far as I know she didn't finish it  - or maybe she did. All I know was it seemed to make numerous Guest Star Appearances at our knitting group once in awhile. She frogged parts of it on occasion as she was a perfect knitter but it never seemed to be done! We would sometimes laugh when she pulled it out once again - I think she just didn't want to finish it. The yarn I used I dyed myself and somehow managed to get three colors from the same yarn and the same pot! It was not really a hard knit and I am not a perfect knitter so the few teeny bobbles are left in it. But I knit it in memory of Mary, I think my thoughts of her went into every stitch. I still miss her and when I find a fun project my thoughts will go to her, gone way too soon.